Elementary is very stable and nice looking on my laptop.Haven't tried it on a VM but I recommend you install it
– Suici DogaMar 6 '16 at 12:59

@SuiciDoga nearly all the packages I use in daily development are outdated in elementary, which isn't very useful for me at all
– Electric CoffeeMar 6 '16 at 13:02

1

first let me ask why do you want 3d acceleration on in an VM? because you cannot test gaming in a vm. you cannot test any programming opencl, opengl or parallelism in a vm. It all needs native hardware control. beside virtual box doesn't has a great graphic driver. if you want to test elementary i would suggest doing a live boot session and test all you want. flash a bootable usb pendrive. boot from the usb pendrive and select try out instead of install. about the packages we use ubuntu LTS so it is known to be a bit outdated. but what libs or packages do you use for development?
– kayApr 21 '16 at 14:46